Rallying for Rugby: Students from East and Saint James Academy play on a combined rugby team

“Team captain.”

Those two words had drifted around senior Mitchell Stedry’s mind throughout the school day. But when his rugby coach told him that he’d been chosen out of his 27 teammates to be the new captain, Stedry could hardly believe it.

Three years prior was the first time Stedry had ever even picked up a rugby ball. He’d joined the Saint East rugby team — a hybrid team of Saint James and East students — in eighth grade.

“When he joined us, Mitchell was this small, scared kid,” Saint East coach Rob Loney said. “Now he’s this super skilled, big athletic guy making tackles, making runs. And you look at where he was in eighth grade when he joined and he’s developed so much so quickly. That’s what Saint East is all about.”

Stedry’s journey from rookie to team captain is remarkable, but not uncommon among Saint East rugby players — the program is aimed to give students the training and skills they need to excel in rugby.

“What I like most about rugby is the physicality of the game,” Stedry said. “It’s just super involved, I used to play football and I get the ball a lot more in rugby, which is what makes it fun for me.”

The team that Stedry and many others know today began in 1990 by a few high school players simply looking to have fun while playing one of their favorite sports competitively. Since then, the team has expanded drastically, and now is home to 27 dedicated high schoolers.

The team has changed a lot since then in terms of the numbers of players, coaches and even uniforms. In fact, 2015 was when the team expanded from exclusively East players to to Saint James players as well.

However, the core mission of the team remains the same — to give high school athletes a place to play rugby in a team setting.

“Rugby is truly a team sport,” Connor Burke, social coordinator for the Kansas City Blues Rugby Club, said. “In basketball, you can get away with having one player driving the ball up the court and shooting a layup. In rugby, it’s almost mandatory for the whole team to move around and work together as a singular team unit to score.”

Despite the stereotypes of rugby players, junior Jackson Moulin doesn’t find the game to be restrictive to the size of the player. According to him, anyone is able to find a place within the team.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, I’m too small to do this, I’m too big to do this,’ stuff like that,” Moulin said. “[Playing] rugby shows you that size doesn’t matter because you have little dudes tackling big dudes, little dudes running over big dudes and vice versa.”

Currently, the team is vying for the top spot in the league against Saint Thomas Aquinas. Even though Aquinas is ranked first in the nation, Saint East is up for the challenge.

The state title is what every high school rugby team across Kansas has their sights set on. In years past, Saint East has come close, but ended up placing second or third. This year, however, the team members and coaches are confident that they have a chance of not only competing in the final match, but winning it all.

“In my 20 something years of coaching the team, the best times we had were at state,” Loney said. “Back in the earlier years — maybe the third or fourth year I’d joined — the old East team was a powerhouse — winning all sorts of games, playing spectacularly, all of that. The team we have this year has the chance to make the same sort of legacy.”